Other versions circulating concurrently — including variants set in Milpitas, California and Savannah, Georgia — feature the same text with slight modifications. "FYI — Ladies Beware!" begins one specimen of the email. "Be safe, Beware..." warns another. At least one variant concludes with this cautionary statement:

People, it is unfortunate that in today's world, we can trust no one. This woman was smart and lucky. The next one of us (male or female) might not be. Trust no one! Be safe!

Fairy tales for adults

"Trust no one."  That's the moral, explicit or implied, of a good many popular urban legends, including such classics as "The Kidney Snatchers," a chilling tale of doping and dismemberment at the hands of a global cabal of organ reapers. The persistent message is that it's a dangerous and terrifying world out there, one in which any stranger, well-dressed or otherwise, might have a knife (or a scalpel) concealed in his briefcase with which he plans to do us bodily harm.

Apocryphal stories like these — essentially fairy tales for adults — tap into deep-seated, universal fears that are at once rational and irrational. There are dangerous people in the world, to be sure. Wisdom dictates behaving cautiously around strangers depending on the circumstances. These are givens. On the other hand, it's surely a rare and unlikely occurrence to be accosted at shopping malls by well-tailored businessmen with arsenals in their briefcases.

Just because these stories take the form of cautionary tales with a gripping moral message doesn't mean they have anything truly useful to teach us about the world. "Trust no one" is hardly a practical credo to live by. We oughtn't conduct our lives as if every stranger is a potential axe-murderer because, among other reasons, it simply isn't the case.

No, if urban legends teach us anything at all, they teach us about ourselves and how we perceive the world. They're a window on human psychology, exposing many of our deepest fears, wishes and resentments.

Consider the Tuttle Mall story in particular. It's improbable and demonstrably untrue, yet has been widely taken for fact and circulated from friend to friend to friend across the U.S. and around the world as a deadly serious warning to all women. It doesn't prove that that there are madmen lurking in parking lots everywhere, nor that our lives are in grave peril when we accept the help of strangers. It doesn't prove that every time we set foot outside our homes we ought to be afraid.

What it does prove, by its very existence, is that we are already afraid.

Related articles:

The Hairy-Armed Hitchhiker
Older variant of the same urban legend

The Knife in the Briefcase
Word-of-mouth variants

'A New Twist on Kidnapping'
2004 email version